Heavy Hitter Sales Wisdom: Proven Sales Warfare Strategies, Secrets of Persuasion, and Common-Sense Tips for Success (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: expressive managers, word catalog, last vendor, Sun Tzu, Heavy Hitters, Ronald Reagan (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Praise for Heavy Hitter Sales Wisdom

"Steve Martin takes a much-needed look at how successful executives read verbal and nonverbal messages, which allows them to quickly understand the subtext of their customers' minds. The best part is that the author shares effective strategies that put more fun into selling and more money into salespeople's pockets."
—Gerhard Gschwandtner Founder and Publisher, Selling Power magazine

"Steve Martin's interesting examination of great leaders in history and the parallels he draws between waging a war and waging a sales campaign should be required reading for enterprise salespeople."
—Jay Fulcher, Chief Executive Officer, Agile Software

"This powerful book provides real-world strategies you can use to increase sales immediately!"
—Brian Tracy, President, Brian Tracy International, author, Getting Rich Your Own Way

"Heavy Hitter Sales Wisdom goes beyond the traditional description of sales cycles to the heart of selling. It's about the emotional connection with the customer, but also the attack and destruction of the competition."
—Olivier Helleboid, Vice President, Software Operations, Hewlett-Packard

"Heavy Hitter Sales Wisdom provides field sales generals and sales soldiers with tons of strategy, persuasion techniques, and common-sense approaches to winning the hearts and minds of prospects. This book will add new weapons to your arsenal."
—Tim Kelliher, Senior Vice President, Sales, DHL Global Mail

From the Inside Flap

Steve Martin introduced his innovative sales system in Heavy Hitter Selling. That book showed you how to become a Heavy Hitter—that special seller who doesn't just succeed, but succeeds wildly. And it showed you that the key to sales success is in learning how people think and communicate, how they make decisions, and how to use science-based tactics and techniques to persuade them.

Now, as a follow-up to that successful sales primer, comes Heavy Hitter Sales Wisdom, a book of insight from some of the world's heaviest hitters of all time—from Sun Tzu to George S. Patton, Jesus Christ to Siddhartha Gautama. But what do all these famous figures have to do with sales? Just like the best Heavy Hitters in sales, they were masters of strategy, persuasion, and commonsense judgment.

Those salespeople who successfully master the three roles of strategist, persuader, and sage of common sense become true Heavy Hitters. They exceed quotas, close the biggest deals, make tons of money, and enjoy themselves in the process. Heavy Hitter Selling taught you how to join the ranks of that sales elite. Heavy Hitter Sales Wisdom offers a bracing jolt of motivation, effective strategy, and hard-earned wisdom to help solidify your status as a Heavy Hitter.

Heavy Hitter Sales Wisdom neither oversimplifies the art of selling, nor overanalyzes the minute details of sales strategy. It provides even experienced sales professionals with state-of-the-art sales strategies, truly enlightening wisdom, and a uniquely entertaining approach to sales. It condenses the teaching of some of the greatest military and political leaders into a healthy serving of strategy and tactics for those of us who want to plan and win the big sales battles—against the competition in the marketplace and against customers themselves. And it's especially useful for those professionals in complex or business-to-business sales who must penetrate bureaucracies, influence key decision makers, and tailor their products to fit their customers' specific needs.

This book teaches sales strategy, persuasion skills, and common-sense tactics based on the wisdom of some of the greatest figures in history—the original Heavy Hitters. If you want to win more sales and become a Heavy Hitter yourself, this wise, practical resource guides your way with advice from some of the most influential people of all time.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (September 29, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470052317
• ISBN-13: 978-0470052310
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #680,145 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Advanced Version of Heavy Hitter Selling, November 25, 2006

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

If you liked Heavy Hitter Selling, you'll love Heavy Hitter Sales Wisdom. The ideal reader is someone who has five to ten years of experience in selling enterprise-wide software or other cross-department products and services to large organizations. In this new book, Steve Martin (not the comedian) connects sales professionals to military strategy and tactics as expounded by Sun Tzu, Napoleon and George Patton; the persuasion methods used by Jesus, the Buddha and Ronald Reagan; and hard-won lessons from his own career displayed as brief stories with suggested actions.

What the book doesn't handle nearly as well is a situation where you are developing a new market and your customers need to be educated about the potential of any offering in this area. Perhaps Mr. Martin will handle that circumstance in a future book.

The best part of this book came in the author's compelling use of military analogies to closely fought competitive selling situations where lots of people are involved from both the potential customer and the vendors. He made lots of connections that I had never thought of before and deepened my understanding of gaining an advantage in the competitive selling process.

As with Heavy Hitter Selling, I found his description and application of neuro-linguistic programming to be somewhat over simplified and at variance in places with the training I received in this subject from Dr. Richard Bandler and Anthony Robbins. But his work in this area will undoubtedly stimulate you to want to learn more . . . which is good.

The persuasion examples were well chosen and analyzed. I particularly liked his analysis of the meeting of Jesus with the Samaritan woman (John 4:4-30) as an example of effective communications.

I was skeptical, however, of his conclusions about how George W. Bush defeated John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. I think the issue was more complex than the way the two communicated to voters, but I agree that communications style was part of the difference between the two candidates.

I found myself taking lots of notes and rereading several sections. I don't do either one very often with selling books. Mr. Martin once again demonstrates that he is in the first rank of business authors on the subject of selling.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fun read on a tough subject, October 2, 2006

By	Jonny Tropic (Dove Canyon, CA USA) - See all my reviews

I have been reading books on sales for more years than I like to admit. Most sales books are real yawners. Heavy hitter sales wisdom is the first sales book that I wanted to keep reading from start to finish. Why? Because it is not only very interesting and insightful, but it is a very fun book to read. Sure, there is a lot of useful information on sales strategies and tactics; in fact it is truly unique in how it uses history and great leadership as a guide to waging great sales campaigns. What is really unique about this book is how much you will enjoy reading it.

I predict that this sales book will not sit on a shelf, but will actually get read by those who either seek it out by themselves, or receive it as required reading from their sales manager.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wisdom of Great Leaders apply to Sales Field. Great work., November 14, 2006

By	Cesar Dulong (Mexico D.F) - See all my reviews

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Steve Martin makes a excellent work in this book using war and great leaders how example tha can be transpolated to sales field.
I agree completely with Steve about you must analyze and understand sales like a no bloody battle where you can use some tools of war in order to get better positioned to defeat your competitor.

The message here is use the power of communication, better you communicate, better results you get. I can see this in my daily work where when you better communicate your message, better chances has to advance and win the sale. Steve has emphasized in great form about improving communication and aligning " word catalog" ( more references in his preview book " Heavy Hitter Selling" ) with your customer and now with Heavy Hitter Wisdom, Steve deliver another excellent book where he explains in a very clear way how to apply war strategies and tactics to win the sales.
Great work Steve!!